A man searches for his lost daughter, imprisoned by his own guilt and shame. Haunting, expressionistic psychodrama from the director of Clean, Shaven.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2006
Keane 2004
In this ultra-realist drama you will witness a lead performance so convincing, so pure and so tortured that it will haunt you for days afterward. Director Kerrigan, who floored audiences and critics with his début feature Clean, Shaven, enters the struggles of another severely disturbed mind in Keane. We meet the title character in a bus station asking total strangers if they’ve seen his daughter. We begin to understand that sometime during the past year, at this very station, he turned his attention away from his daughter for a split second and suddenly she was gone. What begins as a gripping mystery evolves into the harrowing torment of a man imprisoned by his own guilt and hysteria. When Keane meets a solo mother and her seven-year-old daughter, a terrible dread dawns on the viewer that reality is only in the eye of the beholder. Unforgettable and brilliant – it’s my pick from That’s Incredible Cinema.